Nuclear Reactors 354 - Decommissiong Nuclear Power Plants Will Be A Growth Industry For Decades To Come
Many of the operating nuclear power reactors in the world were built in the 1970s. In the U.S., the original licensing period for power reactors was forty years. This means that starting around 2010, a lot of power reactors licenses began running out. Owners of many of the reactors with expiring licenses have applied for a twenty year extension and received it. The steel used in the construction of reactors and containment vessels becomes brittle and weaker over time from neutron bombardment so licenses cannot be extended indefinitely. And, with cheap fossil fuels and alternative sustainable energy sources declining in cost, some nuclear power reactors are not able to compete in the energy marketplace. If the owner of a power reactor cannot operate the reactor at a profit, they lose their license. These and other factors make it a certainty that many nuclear power reactors in the U.S. and abroad will have to be permanently shut down in the near future.
When a nuclear power plant is closed, a process called decommissioning has to be carried out. The reactor and associated equipment must be dismantled and disposed of. All fuel must be removed from the reactor and the spent fuel pool and disposed of. Decommissioning is a lengthy and complex process that required expertise, time and a lot of money. If the money is not available for decommissioning, then a reactor may just be shut down and the site boarded up and fenced in for decades. This raises concerns about security and safety as deterioration of the shuttered facility may lead to radioactive materials leaking into the environment.
Economic projects suggest that the global market for decommissioning services and nuclear waste disposal will be huge in the coming decades. It may take as much as a hundred years to decommission all the existing nuclear power plants in Europe. Early estimates state that sixteen European nations will have to spend at least two hundred and eighty eight million dollars on disposal of nuclear wastes. A major problem for the decommissioning industry is the lack of skilled qualified workers to carry out the necessary tasks.
The U.K. has a dozen sites where the reactors have already been shut down and eight hundred and sixty three million dollars a year for the next ten years will be spend cleaning up the sites. The U.K. is hosting the Nuclear Decommissioning Conference for Europe starting on May 31st of this year. Major nuclear companies from Europe and other parts of the world will be participating in hopes of getting a piece of the huge amount of money that will have to be spent on decommissioning.
There are two hundred nuclear power reactors in the world that will need to be shut down by 2025. The biggest unanswered question with respect to decommissioning is what to do with all the nuclear waste from nuclear weapons production and civilian nuclear power reactors. Nuclear nations have tried to site and construct practical deep geological repositories for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste but all attempts so far have failed. Given this uncertainty, it is not really known how much the permanent disposal of nuclear waste will cost.
Decommissioning of nuclear power plants and disposal of nuclear waste will be a growth industry for many decades to come.
